The Birthday Party Competition

For the past 5 years I have worked every weekend so Lillianna's birthday sleepover has always been from Friday night to Saturday morning. I would take Saturday morning off from my ophthalmology job which was 8am-12pm but I still worked my 2nd job from 1pm-7pm. Apparently,without knowing it,this saved a party conflict all these years. Lillianna's classmate Bridget must've been having her birthday party on Saturday which never interfered with Lillianna's party. (Their birthdays are one day apart.)

Since I quit my 2nd job back in May,this is the first time we can have the party from Saturday to Sunday. As "luck" would have it,the girls sent out their invitations on the same day and invited almost all the same people. When I heard this news I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was going to come down to a popularity contest and friendship loyalty. Who needs this crap at 10??

Lillianna and Bridget are friendly in school but they've never been friends. They don't invite one another to their birthday. They don't ask for playdates. They aren't involved in any common activities......but they do have many of the same friends.

Lillianna invited 15 people to her birthday. Four of them are people Bridget doesn't even know since they're not from school so we knew we weren't going to have a conflict there. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The first wave of sadness came when Lillianna announced,"Hannah isn't coming." Lillianna had just been to Hannah's party a few weeks ago so I couldn't imagine why she wasn't coming. Lillianna said,"Hannah told me that since I invited 15 and Bridget invited 12,she felt she should go to Bridget's party."

I'm an awful mother. My first thought was,"Well.....if that's the way she is going to play she doesn't need to be friends with MY child!" Luckily I didn't say that. I have no idea what I said really since I was so stunned that Hannah wasn't coming.

Two girls can't come at all. One is going camping with her family much to the horror of her mother who left the message on my answering machine. Sarah,one of Lillianna's closest friends is in a soccer tournament out of state. I promised Lillianna that she could have a special sleepover on another night with Sarah. She was one of the 3 girls with us at the dude ranch.

So now it's a waiting game. Neither girl wanted to change their party date since the invitations had already been sent. Lillianna and I know that some of her friends will probably go to Bridget's party and not come to hers and that hurts us both. She loves having her friends sleep over for her party.
I told her that it doesn't matter how many girls are here. We will have fun just like we always do.

I don't want Bridget to be sad and not have her friends at her party either. I want them both to have a happy birthday. They deserve that. They're 10 year old little girls!

Have you ever dealt with this situation? What did you do?